Day: April 18, 2017

After centuries, the hordes that sit and swoon to the classicality of Shakespeare are yet unaware that William the bard of bards was woefully mistaken.

Shakespeare proclaimed:

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

Like everything else in this waning world of woe it is the one event called, the resurrection of Christ, which stops the flywheel of time and sends it in the other direction. Now it is death that is the poor player who struts and frets for his brief hour of time.

Death will be heard no more, the tale told by an enemy of God, a deceiver, an idiot, who thinks that his fury can forever cause men and angels to cower, fear, flee or fall into an unknown dark and foreboding eternal blackness.

It is death that is doomed, temporary, overrated and overstated.

Christ’s resurrection is not a hope that some will escape into conscious-less darkness, but rather it is a promise that no one will escape at all. All the living will live again. The place of their abode is the only question that is open to variation.

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.” John 5: 25

Patronizing error, lessor gods and smaller minds have done more than miss the many promises that Christ made about his own resurrection, they have stumbled over the infinitely higher concept that – he is the resurrection in the flesh.

“..I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” John 11: 25

Life does not lose nor end, but death has a day for its own death.

“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” 1 Corinthians 15: 26

When college professors and secularists debate the very existence of Christ, his divinity and his historicity they show that they are unable to discern the most basic truth about their own existence.

If they came from life they will return to, and answer to life. Life has a name, a kingdom and a full plan to bring everyone fully back to a state of cognizance and in their flesh they shall stand and see God.

The crowd standing before him will be innumerable and fully populated with paupers and presidents, mighty and weak, old and young – all present and accounted for.

“And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.” Revelation 20: 12

Death and its concomitant peripherals seem to be reigning supreme among secularists, terrorists, and the generally deficient of spiritual understanding, but it will not always be so. Death is the great farce, the ultimate fake. It is being pursued by the mouth of the great Lion of the Tribe of Judah for his ultimate and final consumption.

“He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it.” Isaiah 25: 8

The resurrection of Christ isn’t merely about Easter religious observances, spring, flowers, bunnies and Easter bonnets, it is the single most important event in the history of mankind. It is the pivotal point upon which every man and woman’s final destiny rests.

Perhaps no one in recent history has described this immutable truth better than Mr. Timothy Keller.

“If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching, but whether or not he rose from the dead.” – Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

Like this:

Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm; but how can one be warm alone? Ecclesiastes 4:11

A study found that the stress hormone cortisol was significantly reduced when people shared their problems with others. Fifty-two college students were asked to make a speech while being taped by researchers. Those students who were allowed to discuss their fear of giving the speech with another student in the study had lower levels of cortisol before, during, and after the speech than students who didn’t share their feelings of fear.

In other words, as the saying goes, “A problem shared is a problem halved.” The researchers at the University of Southern California could have gained this insight without doing their study. Solomon went into detail about the benefits of living life in partnership with others (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12). He summarized by saying, “And a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” The best example of the synergy of partnerships is marriage, of course. But the principle applies in all of life’s relationships. We can do far more together than we can apart.

Be a partner in life! Couple your God-given gifts with those of others and see if it doesn’t make life sweeter.

A wall with loose bricks is not good. The bricks must be cemented together. Corrie ten Boom

Like this:

Paul learned the secret of being an overcomer: Maintain God’s perspective on the ups and downs of life, and access His power. The apostle was firmly convinced that having the person of the Holy Spirit living in him meant that God’s power was available to him.

We, too, can learn to be at peace while the storms of life rage around us. The first step is to believe that the power of God is within us through the presence of His Spirit. We then must accept that God’s priority for us is transformation into Christ’s image, and not necessarily comfortable circumstances. Diligently seeking to maintain Jesus’ perspective on trials (John 16:33) is also important. Until we settle such matters of faith, true contentment will evade us.

Having embraced these truths, we can learn to use the divine power of the risen Christ. The key lies in submitting our will to His. Then, instead of reacting to life based on our own weaknesses and desires, we will switch to responding on the basis of God’s will and the fact that we belong to Christ. We will be able to consciously surrender ourselves to the Lord and His pattern for living. Yielding control to the Holy Spirit allows God’s will to be done and enables us to accept it. When we can say, “Lord, whatever You choose to send will be all right with me,” then we will experience the inner peace promised to us. (See John 14:27.)

Divine perspective, surrender, and firm faith—these are the ingredients for the victorious life. Now you know the secret, too.

Like this:

“And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever.” (Isaiah 32:17)

As expressed in the old gospel hymn, the “blessed assurance, Jesus is mine” is a “foretaste of glory divine.” According to our text, this “assurance for ever,” together with true peace of soul and quietness of spirit, are products of the “work of righteousness.”

The New Testament exposition of genuine righteousness makes it clear that we who have received Christ’s work of righteousness by faith have been “made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). “To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Romans 4:5).

Thus, salvation is the priceless possession of those to whom Christ’s work of righteousness has been imputed, through faith. On the other hand, the assurance of salvation, accompanied by quietness and peace of heart, is “experienced” only by saved believers who practice the work of righteousness in their daily walk with the Lord. If we truly have salvation, then we ought to manifest the “things that accompany salvation. . . . For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have showed toward his name. . . . And we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end” (Hebrews 6:9-11).

We can, indeed, know that we are saved simply through faith in His work and His Word (e.g., 1 John 5:13). Nevertheless, to know that one’s faith itself is genuine, God has given us this test of faith. “And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments” (1 John 2:3).

This is surely blessed assurance of salvation and a foretaste of glory divine! HMM

Like this:

Leviticus 14:1-7

Leviticus 14:3

perhaps the priest was otherwise occupied, and then the leper must wait until he could leave the camp and come to him, but Jesus is always ready to hear the sinner’s cry. Moreover all that the priest could do was to pronounce a man ceremonially clean who was already healed, but Jesus actually heals the sin-sick soul

Leviticus 14:7

See how the two streams of blood and water meet in the type as they do yet more fully in Jesus. He, as slain for us, purges away our guilt; and, as living for us, he is our righteousness. “He was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” He came not by water only, but by water and blood, and we also are now born of water and of the Spirit. Now also we fly in the open field, and a new song is in our mouth, even praise unto our God.

Mark 1:40-45

In the Evangelists we meet with the cure of a leper by our Lord, in which the Jewish rites and ceremonies are alluded to.

Mark 1:40

Here was faith enough to believe that Jesus could remove an incurable disease, but there lingered a sad “if” in his faith, like a dead fly in the pot of ointment. Nevertheless, the Lord Jesus accepted the imperfect faith, and gave in return a perfect cure.

Mark 1:41

What a blessed “I will.” Christ’s will is omnipotent. He can save us even with his wish. He can save us at this present moment.

Mark 1:42

Salvation is instantaneous. The moment we believe in Jesus we have eternal life.

Mark 1:44

While the law stood our Lord observed it; how much more should we obey the gospel in every point of precept and ordinance.

Mark 1:45

Jesus was modest and retiring, and sought not honour of men. But the man’s gratitude would not let him be silent. He told his story, and the news ran along like fire over a prairie—it blazed abroad, to the praise of the Good Physician.

Like this:

Pilate had never had a problem with causing bloodshed in the past, so it seems strange that he balked at the thought of crucifying Jesus. As governor and the chief legal authority of the land, Pilate had been invested by Rome with the power to decide who would and wouldn’t live. This Roman governor was infamous for his cold-hearted, insensitive, and cruel style of leadership and had never found it difficult to order the death of a criminal—until now.

There was something inside Pilate that recoiled at the idea of crucifying Jesus. The Bible doesn’t state exactly why Pilate didn’t want to crucify Him, but it makes one wonder what he saw in Jesus’ eyes when he interrogated Him. We do know Pilate was shocked at the manner in which Jesus carried Himself, for Matthew 27:14 tells us that Pilate “marveled greatly” at Jesus.

The words “marveled greatly” are from the Greek word thaumadzo which means to wonder, to be at a loss of words, to be shocked and amazed. A man like this Jesus had never stood before Pilate before, and the governor was obviously disturbed at the thought of murdering Him.

In fact, Pilate was so disturbed that he decided to probe deeper by asking questions. He was looking for a loophole that would enable him to escape this trap the Jews had set both for Jesus and for himself as well. Indeed, the Jewish leaders had carefully schemed a trap with three potential results, all of which would make them very happy. The threefold purpose of this trap was as follows:

1. To see Jesus judged by the Roman court, thus ruining His reputation and guaranteeing His crucifixion, while at the same time vindicating themselves in the eyes of the people.

To ensure that this happened, the Jewish leaders falsified charges that made Jesus appear to be a bona fide political offender. These were the charges: 1) that He had perverted the whole nation—a religious charge that was the responsibility of the Sanhedrin to judge; 2) that He had commanded people not to pay their taxes to Rome; and 3) that He claimed to be king (see Luke 23:2). According to Roman law, Jesus should be crucified for claiming to be king. If these charges were proven true, Pilate was bound by law to crucify Him. If this is what followed, the first purpose of their scheme would have worked.

2. To see Pilate wiped out and permanently removed from power on the charge that he was unfaithful to the Roman emperor because he would not crucify a man who claimed to be a rival king to the emperor.

Had Pilate declined to crucify Jesus, this rejection would have given the Jewish leaders the ammunition they needed to prove to Rome that this governor should be removed from power because he was a traitor to the emperor. News would have reached the emperor of Rome that Pilate had permitted a rival king to live, and Pilate would have been charged with treason (see John 19:12).

It is interesting that this same charge was brought against Jesus. It was a charge that most assuredly would have led to Pilate’s own death or banishment. If Jesus was allowed to go free by the Roman court, the Jewish leadership would have been thrilled, for then they would have had a legal reason to expel Pilate from their land. Thus, the second purpose of their scheme would have worked.

3. To take Jesus back into their own court in the Sanhedrin if Pilate would not crucify Him, where they had the religious authority to stone Him to death for claiming to be the Son of God.

The truth is, the Jewish leaders never needed to deliver Jesus to Pilate because the court of the Sanhedrin already had the religious authority to kill Jesus by stoning for claiming to be the Son of God. Even if Pilate refused to crucify Jesus, they fully intended to kill Him anyway (see John 19:7).

So we see that the trip to Pilate’s court of law was designed to turn Jesus’ arrest into a political catastrophe that would possibly help the Jewish leaders get rid of Pilate as well. But if Jesus had been freed by the Roman court, they intended to kill Him anyway. This was the third part of their scheme.

The solution to this mess was easy! All Pilate had to do was crucify Jesus; then he would have happy Jewish elders on his hands; no charges of treason leveled against him in Rome; strengthened ties to the religious community; and a guarantee of remaining in power. Pilate just had to say, “CRUCIFY HIM!” and this political game would be over. But he couldn’t bring himself to utter those words!

Instead, Pilate gave Jesus three opportunities to speak up in His own defense. But Jesus said nothing. Isaiah 53:7 (nkjv) says, “… As a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth.” According to the law, Jesus should have automatically been declared “guilty” because He passed up three chances to defend Himself. But this time Pilate simply could not permit himself to follow the due course of judicial process. He sought instead to find a way out of this dilemma.

As noted above, perhaps Pilate saw something in Jesus’ eyes that affected him. Maybe Jesus’ kind and gracious behavior grabbed Pilate’s heart. Others have speculated that Pilate’s wife may have secretly been a follower of Jesus who told her husband about His goodness and the miracles that had followed His life. Matthew 27:19 reports that Pilate’s wife was so upset about Jesus’ impending death that she even had upsetting dreams about Him in the night. She sent word about her dreams to Pilate, begging him not to crucify Jesus.

As Pilate probed deeper in his interrogation, he discovered that Jesus was from Galilee. At long last, Pilate could breathe a sigh of relief. He had found the loophole that shifted the full weight of the decision to his old enemy, Herod! Galilee was under the legal jurisdiction of Herod. What a coincidence! Herod just “happened” to be in Jerusalem that week to participate in the Feast of Passover!

Pilate promptly ordered Jesus to be transferred to the other side of the city to the residence where Herod was staying with his royal entourage. The Bible tells us, “And when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad: for he was desirous to see him of a long season, because he had heard many things of him; and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by him” (Luke 23:8). However, it didn’t take long for Herod to get angry with Jesus and return Him to Pilate!

What do you think went through Jesus’ mind as He stood before first a Roman governor, then a Jewish king—only to be shipped back to the Roman governor again? Have you been feeling knocked around and passed from one authority figure to another at home, at church, in the workplace, or in the governmental system? If so, you can feel free to talk to Jesus about it, because He really understands the predicament you find yourself in right now!

Hebrews 4:15, 16 says, “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” Since Jesus understands your dilemma, I advise you to speak freely to Him about the emotional ups and downs you feel as a result of your situation. His throne is a throne of grace—a place where you can obtain mercy and find grace to help in your time of need.

So go before God’s throne today. He will hear you, answer you, and give you the power and wisdom you need to press through this time in your life!

MY PRAYER FOR TODAY

Lord, I am so glad You understand when I feel confused about the person I am supposed to report to and to whom I am supposed to be accountable at work and at church. Sometimes I feel like my leaders send me back and forth, not knowing what to do with me or to whom I am supposed to report, which makes it hard for me to do my job. I know that those who are over me have their own challenges, so I want to be helpful to them, not judgmental of them. Please give me the wisdom to know how to behave in a godly manner in this environment.

I pray this in Jesus’ name!

MY CONFESSION FOR TODAY

I confess that I have the mind of Christ for my situation. I am not in confusion; rather, I walk in peace in every situation. Because Jesus has been in my same place, I go to Him to tell Him about my situation, and He gives me all the mercy and grace I need to be successful in this place where He has called me!

I declare this by faith in Jesus’ name!

QUESTIONS FOR YOU TO CONSIDER

Do you feel like you are knocked around from one authority to another at your job or in your position at church? Are you confused about whom you are really supposed to be accountable to?

Have you ever asked for clarification regarding this matter? If you didn’t understand what you were told, did you seek further clarification to avoid confusion?

If you’ve done all you can to properly report to the authorities who are over you and they still don’t like the way you are reporting to them, have you prayed and asked the Lord to help you become what your authorities need you to be?

Have you been feeling knocked around and passed from one authority figure to another at home, at church, in the workplace, or in the governmental system? If so, you can feel free to talk to Jesus about it, because He really understands the predicament you find yourself in right now!

When it comes to growing into spiritually mature men and women we often have the illusion that it can be done overnight; that somehow through certain spiritual experiences or the expression of the gifts, the process of spiritual growth can be hurried up or short-circuited. When we go this route, we end up with squashy, weak, spiritual mushrooms: People who are here today and gone tomorrow.

If, on the other hand we understand that the process of spiritual maturity takes a great deal of time, energy, nourishing, and just plain living through the storms of life, we may actually end up with spiritual Redwoods: Tall, stately paragons of strength and beauty that give nourishment and shelter to others amidst the harshness of life.

Because obedience to God’s Word is generic to this maturing process, let me put forth four suggestions on how to build the Word of God into your life:

1. STUDY IT THROUGH – Choose a verse or passage. Discipline your mind to carefully analyze it, asking the question, “What exactly is the meaning here?” Come at it as an academician.

2. PRAY IT IN – Once you understand the Biblical truth, surrender your will to it. Search your soul over it. Absorb it into your bloodstream. Prayerfully ask God to build it into your life.

3. WORK IT OUT – Ask the question, “What can I do in a practical way to apply this truth to my life… to my situation?” For example, you might write an application as follows: “Starting today, we in our company will no longer exaggerate what our product can deliver to the public. Along with its strengths, we will explain its limitations.”

4. PASS IT ON – Once the truth of the Scriptures have become an integral part of your life, it is only natural that you bear fruit by passing it on to others. Spiritual multiplication:

“But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.” (Luke 8:15)

QUESTION: Judging from your present relationship with the Word of God, are you in the process of becoming a spiritual redwood tree, or simply settling in as a mushroom?